CURRENT WEREWOLF SIGHTINGSPosted on August 28, 2017 by Lisanne • 1 Comment

I had originally planned on moving on from werewolves, but my writing buddy Cary pointed out that I hadn’t talked about any recent sightings. I thought this was a great idea, and after a little research realized that there have been numerous werewolf sightings in recent history, so lets chat about the most famous one. Sound good?

THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD

Arguably, the most famous sighting is the Beast of Bray Road. I touhed on this briefly in my very first werewolf post called Werewolves-A Brief History (http://www.lisanneharrington.com/monsters-post/) but let’s delve into the story more thoroughly.

The Beast

As early as 1936, there were reports from Wisconsin about bizarre encounters with strange creatures many thought were werewolves. But it all really started in 1989 in the small town of Delavan, Wisconsin, population 4550. On a rainy Halloween night, Doristine Gipson was driving down Bray Road and leaned over to change the radio station when her car suddenly jerked to the right. She got out of the car to she if she had hit something. Peering into the darkness, a huge silhouette came rushing directly at her. Terrified by the figure and the sound of its “heavy feet,” Doristine jumped into her car and drove away as fast as she could, but not before the beast leaped onto the trunk of her car. Lucky for Doristine, the car was slippery from the rain and the creature couldn’t hold on, falling heavily to the ground.

Perhaps out of morbid curiosity, or maybe foolishness, she returned to the spot later that night, accompanied by a young girl she was taking trick-or-treating. What a trick it must have been when they saw the beast moving along the side of the road! Doristine told her companion to lock the door as she drove quickly away.

She later described the beast as “quite bulky, like someone who works out continually with weights,” about seven feet tall, and wondered if it was a bear, angry because she had struck it with her car. Whatever it was, she told a neighbor about it, showing her the scratches on the car she claimed it made with its claws. As is human nature, word spread and more townspeople came forward with their own stories of encountering the beast.

Shortly before Doristine came upon the creature, Lorianne Endrizzi saw something hunched over on the side of the road, in just about the same place where Doristine saw it. Slowing down, Lorianne realized that it was a beast with grayish-brown hair, a long snout like a wolf, fangs, and pointed ears. Its yellow eyes glowed. It had a wide, muscular chest with arms jointed like a human beings. It held some food with its palms upward, with human-like fingers that ended in claws. The hind legs were bent as though kneeling.

Is this THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD?

Lorianne felt the creature was so human-like it frightened her. It wasn’t until she saw an illustration of a werewolf shortly thereafter that she realized what she had seen.

Eleven-year-old Heather Bowry and her friends were on the way home after spending the day sledding near Bray Road and saw what they at first thought was a big dog. When they called to it, the creature stood up on its hind legs and looked at them before running at them at tremendous speed with what Heather called “a bigger leap than dogs run.” The kids ran as fast as they could. It followed them for about 250 years before finally running off.

SATANIC RITUAL?

In the summer of that same year, before the reported sightings, chickens had been stolen from their coops, and about a dozen dead animals had been dumped in a ditch along nearby Willow Road, not far from Bray Road. Some of the animals were pets that had been missing. Some were decapitated or dismembered while others had ropes tied around their back legs or had their throats slit. It was all very gruesome, especially the dog that had its chest ripped open and its heart removed.

John Frederickson, the county humane officer, believed the animals had been used in satanic rituals. Rumors surfaced about occult graffiti in an abandoned house located just a quarter mile off Bray Road, and at the local cemetery where headstones had been covered with candle wax.

Satanic rituals in a graveyard *giggles*

Were satanic activity and the Bray Road Beast connected in some way? No one knows for sure. But it’s clear that something was happening on Bray Road.

Unless…

REAL OR HOAX?

The whole thing could have been a big fat hoax. Doristine Gipson supposedly saw the creature on Halloween night. Not that that necessarily means the story is bogus. But you have to be a little suspicious when taken in tandem with the intricacies and inter-weavings of all the relationships of the people involved.

What do you think?

One morning in the winter of 1990, on the bus to school, Heather Bowry told a friend about her experience with the creature. Pat Lester, the driver, heard the story and passed it on to a reporter named Linda Godfrey, who, having heard many of the rumors circulating around town, did a series of articles on the Beast of Bray Road.

Linda Godfrey’s article

Pat is Lorianne Endrizzi’s mother and Doristine’s neighbor. Tammy Bray, who lived on Bray Road, also claimed to have seen the beast in one of the last reported encounters, and was a friend of Lorianne’s.

Did Tammy hitch her wagon to the tales of the others, not wanting to be left out? Could these sightings have been made up, perhaps by people who wanted to inject a little excitement into their otherwise boring lives? Or was it simply coincidence that they all knew each other? After all, it was a small town were everybody likely knew everyone else.

It does seem strange that there have been no further sightings of the Beast of Bray Road. Has it disappeared, perhaps forever? Or is it simply biding its time, lurking in the shadows, waiting for another chance to wreak havoc and create mayhem?

Only the Beast knows for sure…

Join me next time when we’ll talk about something new and different. PROMISE! In the meantime, be sure to check out my Wolf Creek Mystery Series. Book 1, called Moonspell, and Book 2, Moon Watch, are available at all the standard online retailers. Book 3, Moon Shadows, is due out in January 2018.